


Soft Eyes, Straight Lines

by greyskais



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst with a Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fem!Minghao, Friends With Benefits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 13:10:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9821966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyskais/pseuds/greyskais
Summary: Seokmin wasn't supposed to be the one to whom every other fell short, and she wasn't supposed to be bitter.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know if this is any good but i thought i might as well publish it as not, since it was finished
> 
> more genderbent seventeen members because what can i do girls on top and stuff; also mentions of herve leger and roland mouret because i can

Minghao drained the rest of the Veuve Clicquot in her glass and wondered how it had come to this. Everything was suddenly exhausting. Her boobs were nearly falling out of her killer Herve Leger, and her underwear had slid up her asscrack. The red was not a good choice; she should have gone with the demurer, nude Roland Mouret that had been a gift to herself when she’d been promoted last year. Everyone was staring. Her date didn't notice. He didn't notice anything. She poured herself another glass.

It was going to her head, really. What was his name? She couldn't really remember, except that he had been 'that guy from HR' for a month before he'd had a name attached to the face and he'd worked the guts up to ask her out, so sweetly and shyly that she'd pinked with pleasure right to her toes. It was a real ego trip to have a guy asking her out like that, actually asking, not demanding; that was a rarity among the guys in her firm who asked her out.

He signalled the maître d’, speaking lowly to him in French. Outside, the falling of snow cast a dreamy, sparkling haze on the streetlights and reflections of the pavement. What pretension, Minghao thought, mulling silently and tracing the gilded edges of the dinner service with her eyes. He’d thought to impress her by taking her to this swanky place on the first date, probably. It put a bad taste in her mouth that he thought that flashing money was a suitable way of increasing her attraction to him. It just showed Minghao he hadn’t thought about who she was and what she liked, or that he simply had no personality. She took another sip. She was wrong to have thought he would be any different from any of the other finance fuckboys that wanted to stick their dicks in her. The guy from HR was the type to like the chase. He thought he'd caught her already.

 

 "Are you going out with what's-his-face?" Seokmin had asked her last night, lifting his face from the crook of her neck.  He'd been down sucking a hickey for God knows how long; it felt hot and taut on her skin, and would probably be a bitch to cover. Fuck him, she thought, until he rolled his hips and drove his length into her in a way that nearly made her scream. "’Cause you should probably - ah, fuck - you know - tell him about the thing we, uh, thing."

"You have to bring that up now of all times?" she grunted, digging her nails into his back and delighting in the ragged noise that tore from his throat. "It's not exactly first date conversation material, Seok. Hi, guy from HR, so good of you to ask me out, and oh, yeah I'm fucking my roommate on the side. Just thought you'd like to know."

"Well, what if you date him more?" he grunted. Minghao moved on hand to fist in his hair, bringing his mouth to hers. Seokmin was somehow more bearable when he wasn't talking, if his mood was like this. They mashed mouths frantically until Seokmin tugged away from her, gasping for breath. The air seemed to scorch the back of Minghao's throat, cold and different and separate from the heat and taste of him. "Well?"

"Shut up and fuck me," she growled, shoving his shoulder and rolling him under her.

 

And really, did he have a right to ask? They’d been long-term roommates who had never really become as close as they could have before she'd come to him first with the idea of casually fucking, but he'd agreed. It was just sex. Nothing more or less than that, and when they weren't fucking, nothing would change. They would fuck, and then sleep in separate rooms after the act. They would wake up in the mornings and go to their respective jobs, Minghao heading downtown to the investment bank and Seokmin, later, to the studio for whichever Broadway project he was involved with at the time. After work, Seokmin would be free to bring home whoever he liked - usually tall, pretty, polished types that liked his strangely honed ruggedness in equal measure. Minghao would be free to do - well, whatever she wanted.

But he'd gone and asked. Now Minghao was left with the consequences, swirling a glass of champagne and watching a waiter laden with plates approached their table. Her date seemed inordinately pleased with himself. It was a fancy French place uptown, French, because French cuisine had a reputation for unpronounceability and therefore inaccessibility and therefore exclusivity. The fact that this was so did not seem to be enough for her date. He seemed to feel the need to speak the language to drive it home to her that he was perfectly at ease here, not at all excluded, and that he could offer her an in to this world that was his. This world was one of creamy thick paper and tiny black serif lettering; high ceilings and Louis XVI chairs upholstered to match the drapes; glittering, glittering lights and dinner services that could pay her rent.

The restaurant was good for certain dishes, or so she’d heard. Seokmin would never take her to a place like this. If they went out. if they were to date. If.

"Lamprey de bordelaise," her date announced as the waiter set down the first plate in front of the two of them. Minghao's stomach turned. "I ordered it just for you."

Seokmin would know that she spoke French, and that she would have understood everything what's-his-face had said to the waiter when he thought she hadn't understood. Lamprey cooked in red wine and its own blood. She wanted to vomit. Minghao was the third one the guy from HR had brought this week. Instead of getting up and leaving, she kept twirling the champagne in her glass.

 

"Hao," Seokmin'd called out to her, earlier, in the apartment when she'd been doing her lipstick, a dusty rose colour that she bought from the drugstore because it reminded her of her mother in China. "You know, if you just wanted to go places, we could go places."

"You don't like going places," she called back, capping the lipstick and dropping it in her purse. Seokmin had come into her doorway, leaning into the doorframe with his arms crossed. She felt a little ridiculous tottering around in her own apartment in this tight dress with curled hair and a made-up face when her roommate and occasional - okay, frequent - fuck was barefoot in sweats and an old, green-grey flannel she'd stolen only just this morning. It might still smell of her, soft musk and violets, the faintest patina over the scent of his skin that had been ground into the fibres from habitual wear. He’d had that thing for years, since they’d first been roommates in their second last year of college. It was the softest fabric she’d ever touched.

"Besides," Minghao steam-rollered on, "this is just sex. You wouldn't give up your hook-ups for me, right?" Seokmin said nothing, merely blinking at her. Minghao chose a mascara from the organiser on her vanity and brushed it over her lashes. "Call one tonight, Seok. You deserve a night off from me scratching your back to shreds."

He snorted. "Your claws aren't as sharp as you think they are, kitten." Minghao picked up her purse and breezed past him, giving him a good slap on the back. _Fuck_ him. She was rewarded with a good wince. She picked up her keys from the bowl on the kitchen counter when Seokmin's hand on her hip stopped her.

"Minghao," he murmured. "I - "

"What?" She turned, but didn't look at his face.

"What time is he coming to pick you up?"

"Half-past. Why?"

Seokmin dropped to his knees in front of her, and Minghao's traitorous body immediately reacted. Her right hand curled into his thick, soft hair and pressed his face towards the juncture of her thighs. His hands were already working at the hem of her dress. She sighed as his warm breath ghosted against her inner thighs.

"You can't scratch my back from here," he murmured, lips moving against the edge of her panties, shuffling them down and away before her slick ruined them for the night. Minghao's eyes flicked to the clock. It was a quarter to. In her anticipation she’d prepared for his arrival much too early. Seokmin’s movements between her legs were soft but insistent, lips velvety against her inner thighs and fingers pressing gently into her hips. She tossed her head back as he parted her outer lips and blew against her clit. "I'll make it quick."

A rush of warmth flowed all through her. "You'd better."

She came fifteen minutes later, her dress bunched around her waist and thighs hitched over his strong shoulders, drenching Seokmin's face with her juices. It took Minghao another ten minutes to recover the use of her legs, and five to tidy herself up before her date came. Seokmin washed his face in the kitchen sink and didn't see her off when her date buzzed through the intercom to tell her he'd arrived.

 

Minghao excused herself from the table, tottering to the ladies' room. Fuck. Why was she thinking of her roommate fucking into her with his tongue – high cheekbones splashed with colour and face contorted into an expression of orgasmic pleasure, as though he wasn’t the one giving, but receiving – while she was on a date with someone else? And why was she trying so hard? Minghao swore that she was about to break an ankle in these accursed stilettos. She nearly splashed her face with water, before remembering that she had a full face of makeup on. Her cheeks were flushed pink when she looked at herself in the mirror, eyes too bright and mascara smudged under her eyes. So fucking annoying. This date sucked. What's-his-name had been staring at her tits all evening and couldn't shut up about himself and his alma mater and his recent promotion and his daddy's fucking yacht.  Minghao gripped the sink and tilted her right leg up so that she could see it a little better by the dim mood lighting. Thank god he hadn't left a mark on her stockings when he'd clumsily trailed his foot along the inside of her calf as he enthusiastically dissected the lamprey.

What a fucking drip. She sent Seokmin a text. How many glasses of wine had she drunk? She hit send and pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead.

_dtae fkign sucks would rahter b w u com pick me up_

She waited for as long as she could. Fuck the guy from HR and fuck if he thought she was taking a dump, and fuck him if he thought that was disgusting. Seokmin didn't reply. Her disappointment at this failure was more disconcerting than every annoying little thing the lost cause outside had done through the course of the evening. Perhaps it pricked Minghao’s pride to be relying on someone she oughtn’t be attached to, but she eventually made her way back to her table, gait swaying perceptibly. Her date's eyes were on her hips and arse, when he could see them.

Minghao was aghast at what she found on the table. He'd paid the bill while she was in the bathroom. He continued to dig into another dish, quenelles of lobster, as she pushed her untouched plate of lamprey away.

"You're so great, Minghao," he said. It irked her that he was referring to her so familiarly. "You know, so many girls these days don't know how to manage themselves. It's because of all that leftist feminist bullshit that they think that being fat is like, okay or something."

She felt herself frosting over but at the same time, swimming with the alcohol going to her head. So he was a materialistic daddy’s boy, but on top of that he was spouting this heinous misogynistic bullshit? Minghao could do nothing but sit there in a haze of growing rage.

When had she last gone out with a guy who hadn’t been such a disappointment? Her stupid brain led her back to Seokmin, stealing fries from her makeshift paper bag plate at the McDonald's across the road from their apartment, trying to shove one into the pocket of her - his - flannel, 'for later', he said. She'd smeared tomato sauce on his nose and he'd laughed, so loud and bright that people had turned around to look at her, and the part-timing high-schooler behind the counter, whose hair stuck up out of the back of his red and yellow cap, had caught her eye and given her a grin and a thumbs up.

"So, do you want to head back to my place later?" what's-his-face asked her, smiling.

Minghao assessed him blandly. "No," she said. "No, not really."

What's-his-face blinked. "What do you mean, no?" His hand moved across the white tablecloth to grip her wrist. "I brought you here and spent all this money and you won't even put out?" he hissed. "I thought you were _smart_ , Minghao. No guy would take a girl out, even if she was as hot as you, if he wasn't expecting her to pay him back. You can’t get something for nothing.”

She snapped. Minghao had no idea what happened, but a moment later she was on her feet and he was wearing a lapful of lamprey and lobster quenelles and he was screaming about the champagne in his eyes.

"Fuck you, you insufferable dickwad," she snarled, " _Va te faire foutre_ , _fils de pute_ , I speak French, and I know that I'm the third girl you've tried to pull that on this week so kindly _fous-toi_!"

Minghao snatched up her purse and stormed out, panting. She made it halfway down the block before she kicked off her shoes and started to run, phone clutched in one hand and heels in the other, hardly able to see. Fuck. She'd left her jacket in the restaurant and it was freezing out, but she couldn't go back and face that asshole again. Her phone buzzed, but she ignored it, running and running until she somehow regained the wits to flag down a cab, blurting her address as the streetscapes blurred through the snow and the wetness of her eyes and the speeding of the traffic.

She threw a fifty at the driver and told him to keep the change. Her apartment building seemed suddenly monolithic, impenetrable and imposing, as if the knowledge of the impossibility of what she wanted had transmuted itself into a physical barrier. Minghao couldn’t work up the courage to walk through the double doors and take the lift up and enter her own home, not when Seokmin was probably balls-deep in a catwalk model or something. The thought made her insides twist up even further.  She turned, jaywalking and stumbling into the McDonald's there, and curled up in a corner booth with a spinning head and aching throat. Fuck the guy from HR. Fuck Seokmin, who hadn't replied to her text. Minghao wanted to vomit.

What had she done? Fuck herself the most for catching feelings. He smiled too much and was noisy and self-obsessed and too nice and that was a lie, he wasn’t self-obsessed, he was obsessed with her, what was she supposed to do? Seokmin wasn't supposed to be the one to whom every other fell short, and she wasn't supposed to be bitter.

"Hao?"

Minghao lifted her head blearily, hissing against the bright light. In that state of wretched reflection the time had passed without her noticing it. There were fifteen missed calls on her phone and it was past midnight. Someone was standing over her, a dark and familiar shape. "Seokmin?" she asked dumbly.

Seokmin took off his jacket and draped it over her, sliding into the booth so that his arm could fit around her shaking shoulders and _God_ he was so strong and warm and she wanted to cry and shake apart.

"Shhh, shh, it's okay, I've got you," he murmured, rubbing her back.

"You - how did you find - "

"Your phone - when you didn't pick up my calls - um, your phone checked in to the free Wi-Fi and posted a status update on your Facebook," he said a little stiffly.

"Huh," she grunted, half in puzzlement and half in wonder.

"Where were you, Hao? I was coming to get you. I'm sorry I didn't see your text sooner. Mingyu’s toilet sprang a leak and I had to go help him fix it."

She named the place. Seokmin's arm tightened around her shoulders, and the other scooped under her knees, lifting her as if she weighed nothing. He might have said something into her hair, might have kissed the shell of her ear. Minghao's vision flickered.

 

Minghao bolted upright, punching a too soft pillow away from her face and off the bed. What the hell had happened? Her hands groped blindly across her stomach and found that the tight elastic of her Herve was gone, replaced with something soft and pilling with too much use. She was so warm. Had what's-his-face done something to her? It was dark, and the only light was a thin stripe falling through the crack in the door from the hallway outside, across the floor to ripple over Minghao’s squinted eye.

She swung her legs out of bed quickly. Her head throbbed and her stomach lurched, protesting the sudden movements. The cold hardwood against her feet made her feel a little more grounded, but it was not as sharp as the pavement through her thin stockings and - oh.

Behind her, Seokmin shifted. "Where you goin'?" he grunted, raspy with sleep.

"Nowhere," she whispered. Seokmin's hand touched her back, and Minghao shuffled back under the covers, gingerly setting her head to rest against the pillows. He hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her flush against his body. Seokmin kissed her nape, carding his fingers through her hair.

 

When Minghao woke up again her back was cold and her mouth tasted like death. The Veuve Clicquot had given her a bitch of a headache and she groaned, regretting everything. More than half a bottle on an empty stomach, what had she been thinking? She blinked, blearily surveying the room she was in. It was Seokmin's alright, with his desk to one side and producing equipment stacked haphazardly around his Mac, to the overflowing clothes hamper and the sagging poster of circa 2007 DBSK tacked to his wardrobe door. He'd hung her dress up. She was wearing his flannel.

She dragged herself to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, willing herself a little more awake and coherent. Her stomach grumbled, and she braced herself over the toilet in case her dinner or lack thereof decided to make a reappearance, but nothing came. Minghao drank from the tap and gave her teeth a cursory scrubbing, contemplating skulking back to her room and sleeping off the hangover and the humiliation.

"Minghao?"

"Hey," she croaked, leaning on the sink and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Seokmin peeked into the bathroom and came in, sitting on the edge of the bathtub. He beckoned her; Minghao came and sat beside him. Seokmin finger-combed her hair away from her face, taking a hairband from around his wrist and securing it in a loose ponytail.

"You feeling better?"

Minghao shrugged.

"Minghao."

"Are you angry with me?" she asked.

"No," Seokmin replied. "What? Why?"

"I dunno," she said, shrugging again. "I feel like shit."

"That's ‘cause you got drunk and walked for God knows how long in the cold in only a cocktail dress," he pointed out. "It has nothing to do with me or my feelings."

"Does any of this?" she asked. "You know - have anything to do with, uh - " Minghao waved her hands demonstratively " - feelings?"

Seokmin froze. Minghao met his eyes and everything slowed to a trickle. Though the rest of his face was sharp, he had such soft eyes. Their expression was unbearable, and Minghao flinched away from Seokmin, until he tugged her back into his side, scrunching the fabric of her sleeve between his fingers.

He looked away. "It's not supposed to."

"But that's different," she protested. "That's not what I'm asking."

"You're strangely rational for a drunk person," Seokmin muttered.

"Stop avoiding my question."

They sat in silence until Minghao's head began to throb, tension building behind her eyes. "Look, if this doesn't - have anything to do with your feelings or - my feelings or - let's just stop. I don't, I can't..."

Seokmin looked at her with something akin to horror; curse him, he couldn't hide a single thing. "What?"

"I'm sorry if you can do this but I can't do this, I can't keep everything separate and _God_ you're probably only the best fuck ever but this isn't fair, not to me or you, and I - " Minghao swallowed thickly.

"No, no, Hao, what are you talking about?"

"And I'm sorry if it's inconvenient but you're going to just have to find someone else to fuck because stupid me, did I fall for you just because you play with my hair and talk nonsense to me after we have sex? What am I, a fourteen-year-old virgin?"

"Minghao," Seokmin whispered. His face had gone bone white. Minghao pushed at his chest to put some distance between them so she could breathe, goddamn it, and think, and sort out her trainwreck thoughts.

"This is shit, you know, and everything is shit, but when you - just hold me, everything is less shit. And I don't know."

"Stop," he said. "What are you saying, Minghao?"

"Stupid Lee Seokmin," she hissed, struggling with the thick feeling in her throat. "Stop it, stop holding my hand and stop _looking_ at me like that." He'd dug under her skin, he fit there like she'd been missing him all along.

To her horror, he started to smile, and then to laugh, holding her closer than ever. “Do you like me?”

Minghao smacked his knee, because his shoulder was not there for the hitting, pillowing her head as it was. Seokmin grasped her other shoulder and turned her to face him. His smile was crooked, tinged with disbelief, but nonetheless radiant – “Do you like me, Xu Minghao?”

“Don’t you dare mess with me,” she said. “I’ll fuck you up. I will.”

“You already have,” he murmured, smile fading suddenly. “A long time ago. Minghao, I – you didn’t know?”

“Know what?” What the fuck was he talking about?

"You're so beautiful," Seokmin said, hand warm and strong against her fingers and palm. As if that explained anything! "So beautiful I couldn't help but be selfish and try to take the pieces of you that I could when we were – "

She leaned her head against his shoulder, chest aching, wanting everything to just stop and return to an earlier time when nothing felt like this and things still ran in straight lines.

"I like you," he said, a little desperately, but still smiling, radiating hope, cradling her hands like priceless gems. "No, I’m in love with you – I’ve been stupid in love with you since senior year and I thought I could handle the benefits without burdening you with my feelings, but I was wrong, and I was selfish. And I'm _selfish_ because I don't want to stop having this – thing – we have, even if you do, because we wouldn’t be _together_. I want to keep you to myself. You're so, so precious, and I want every single smile of yours to be mine, and I want to make love to you, and have these hairbands on my wrist so I can be tied to you forever."

“Really?” she asked. The question escaped before she could contain it; it was so full of perilous and fragile hope that she was struck with a moment of soul-deep fear – then Minghao drew back and punched Seokmin in the thigh. “What the fuck, that was so _cheesy_. And we were never together.”

He kissed the top of her head. Laughingly, he kissed her cheek. Then he kissed her lips as he had done the first time they’d had sex, and she’d ordered him never to do since. “Well, that makes it simple if you want to keep dating what’s-his-face if we were never together in the first place, because all you’d have to say is that you’re single. To make it even more simple - if you don’t go on any more dates with the guy from HR, then you won’t have the occasion to explain to him what we are.”

“What are we?” Shyly, almost, she slid her fingers in the gaps between his; she could sense Seokmin’s smile – he smiled too much. It was inconceivable that there was that much happiness in the world. Minghao could not let herself believe it, despite this impossible feeling of being overfull, brimming over, that had started to bubble in her chest.

“If you want to, dating, I guess,” he said. She tensed against him; he rubbed her back, spreading warmth wherever he touched. “Hey. Don’t overthink things. We’ll be okay.”

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Really?” he murmured into her hair. “Let’s go someplace. Like a date.”

 “I don’t want to go anywhere,” Minghao blurted. Seokmin started in confusion, but she smiled, ruffling his hair until he laughed. “I just want to stay with you.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> let me know if you like angst writing and stuff because i have some more that's not quite finished that is sort of similar to this
> 
> also fielding the idea of a pride and prejudice!au meanie; would anyone want to read
> 
> also i got a twitter, hmu @moshtothehosh since greyskais and kwonspoiled were both taken (kwonspoiled is my tumblr btw)


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